DAMAGED
by roseate
Summary: Four years after Bella left Jacob for good, Olivia Archer returns to La Push. What will happen when Jacob imprints on her?
1. prologue

It was raining when he first saw her.

This might be an appropriate opening line for a romance, or, more suited to Jacob's tastes, a tragedy, but the her in question was Olivia Archer, not Isabella Swan, and he really only saw her for a few seconds, anyways. Just her small round face curled against the banister as Billy welcomed the newest neighbors. The face was not remarkable – large, dark eyes, smallish nose – and she retreated as her name was called somewhere deeper in the house, but Jacob was struck by her. She seemed refreshing and new, although he knew nothing about her. But as he and his father walked away from the door, Jacob felt a curiosity, a desire to know more about these total strangers.

His hair, which seemed in perpetual need of a haircut without Sarah to remind Billy to take Jacob to the barber's, fell in his eyes as he shot a parting look at the closing door behind him, damp from the downpour despite the umbrella held by his father, high over his head. The door was red. Somehow he'd never noticed that when the Delorias lived there. He liked red. He wondered if she liked red, too. With a small sigh, he offered a small prayer that she please, pleasewouldn't turn out to be a mini Rebecca. One nail polish-wielding girl in the neighborhood was more than enough.

Seeing the all too familiar police cruiser round the corner, however, Jacob forgot all about Olivia, his thoughts turning, like his father's, to Charlie and his visiting daughter. Although Billy really wanted to take a nap, he had promised Charlie a boat, buckets of bait, and a beer for the afternoon. He wasn't going to renege, not with Charlie so anxious about his daughter. Bella spent most of the year in Phoenix and seemed as uncomfortable around her inexperienced father as he did around his twelve year-old daughter.

She was on the cusp of puberty and he often moaned about how he was going to handle the hormonal mood swings. Sometimes Billy wondered if Charlie realized how little he actually had to worry about with Bella – straight A's, or nearly, a level head and sense of responsibility certainly not inherited from the flighty Renee. Compared to Rachel and Rebecca's constant tears and convenient lack of pads (oh, those trips to the drugstore – Billy reminded himself mentally to get them to stock up in advance), Charlie was going to have it easy.

As the Swans emerged from their cop car, the rain, which had become more of a light drizzle, tapered off. Looking up at the clouds, Charlie commented on this, before casting a worried glance towards his daughter, who did not return his gaze. Maybe this trip was too soon after her arrival – they'd only stopped at the house long enough to let Bella drop off her duffel bag and get cleaned up. But La Push was neutral territory – Billy managed to avoid mentioning Renee, and there were two girls for Bella to talk to about… female things. Of course, the twins and Bella were kind of removed in age, but it was better than sitting in the den silently watching football. That had been in the early days, before Billy had realized his friend's distress.

Now the fishing trips were almost a ritual, although Charlie wasn't so sure Bella enjoyed them all that much. She was too nice to tell him if she didn't, though, too thoughtful. She was always thoughtful around Charlie, but it had always seemed to him like the kind of thoughtfulness you used on a neighbor or a coworker. Not the sort of relationship he imagined with his only child. But he shouldn't complain – Bella visited him willingly, and if she wasn't quite having fun, she never showed it. And they did have their good moments, such as whenever he tried to cook them a meal. Even at twelve, Bella was far more accomplished in the culinary arts than Charlie would ever be. With a smile, he gestured for Billy to lead the way to the boat.

Jacob never looked back, never noticed the curtains watching him with great interest. With a small disturbance, Olivia grabbed her books and traipsed up to her strange new room and settled in amongst the boxes, chilling tales of vampires and werewolves crowding out all thoughts of the boy in the house across the street.


	2. to blissful emotion

                Grunting, mostly for effect, Jacob lifted the last of the boxes out of the truck and walked gingerly to the end of the truck, before jumping off the end to the asphalt below. Billy had been right about this – it would only take half an hour, max, to help the Archers unload the U-haul and move Olivia's things back into the house. He wasn't sure why she had resurfaced after five years, but his curiosity was hardly peaked. She'd never been particularly attractive, nor had she caught Jacob's interest growing up. As far as he could tell, the girl had gotten in some scrape or other and had chosen to take up residence with her aunt in Seattle. At least, that was how Billy had relayed it. Huh. 'Gotten in a scrape'. The last time he'd heard those words was when Bella had described some part of _Wuthering Heights_ – ah, there was that blinding pain again. Setting the boxes under his arms down on the curb brusquely, he folded onto the curb, his head in his hand as his head, heart, hands throbbed. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He'd managed to avoid thinking of her for at least a week, mostly by numbing his mind with Jerry Springer, and yet she, as always, managed to surprise him, cause him such pain without even her presence. Four long years, and he could still remember her hair. The way it smelled (when the leech hadn't fouled it up), the way it shone in the cloudy light of the average overcast day.

Squeezing his eyes, he fought back the tears she didn't deserve. Four years, and he still expected her to walk through his door, smiles and warm sodas included. But he knew that was impossible – she had chosen, and her choice had been Edward. God, what a blood – no, he could never think of Bella like that. Jacob was glad that he'd never seen her after the inevitable transformation. All his memories were of the soft, defenseless, _human_ Bella. He never wanted to think of her as living stone, because that was all wrong. Slowly, slowly, Jacob felt the tears recede, and another emotion well up inside of him. Anger. Anger at the foul bloodsucker who caused all this, at himself for letting her go like he had and not killing the leech when he had the chance. And above all, anger at his nature – his inability to imprint, to prove to her just how he felt with the unfailing fidelity of Sam or Paul. As the bile rose in his throat, his body began to shake, and he stood, abandoning the boxes on the curb before turning and running for the safety of the forest. He had yet to attain any sort of control over his transformations, and that was just fine with him. His runs were all the emotions he allowed himself – impassioned, irate affairs that drained him of any other need to feel.

He barely reached the forest before he exploded, socks, shoes, shirt flying out behind him as he went. Jacob had always wondered what would happen if he ever transformed in public. Would he be killed? The thought appealed. Then all thoughts left, giving over to blissful emotion.

- - -

Opening the curtains of her room to let in the dim light in, Olivia noticed the Black boy, who had been unloading her things from the U-haul, suddenly stop in midstep, before robotically setting the boxes he'd held under his arms on the curb and crumple to the ground to join them, head in hands. She briefly registered the muscles rippling in his arms. They surely didn't belong on a boy of – well, after you did the math, he was twenty, maybe twenty one, and looked even older than that, so perhaps he was actually more of a man now. But enough about physique. He looked to be in real pain, and he wouldn't be helped by some hormonal fangirl. For a moment she hovered at the window, not sure how to respond to the boy's pain. From what Violet had told her during their weekly calls he eschewed any sort of help with even the smallest tasks. But she couldn't help it – there was something so compelling about the sight of huge hands curled gruffly around a browbone. Turning abruptly from the window, she stepped out the door and took the stairs two at a time, thundering down them as she'd always been told not to. They'd barely met twice, but she wasn't a social worker in training for nothing. Suppose he'd pulled a muscle while hefting her belongings around? There weren't that many truly heavy boxes, but just the slightest awkward motion could throw the body out of whack. Olivia knew how delicate the human body could be, growing up with her easily injured father who threw his back out at least three times a year.

Turning the handle and pulling the door from the frame as quietly as possible, she checked to see if she'd awoken her napping father in the den. Amazed that her storming down the steps had done nothing to disturb him as always, she turned to the storm door, only to find the Black boy (or man, if you prefer) simply… gone. It had taken her only a few moments to dash down the stairs, but if he'd thrown out his back or hurt his arm or something it wouldn't be possible for him to leave so quickly. A shiver ran up her spine, and all her make believe, her childhood religions came rushing back to her. Brushing them away, Olivia opened the storm door and stepped out, trying to remember the name of Billy's son. Jason, Jamie, Jude, Jackson… Jacob? Close enough. And if it wasn't his name, hey, she hadn't seen him in five or six years. She had an excuse.

"Jacob?" she called softly as she approached the abandoned truck. "Jacob? Are you alright?" The minutes passed with no answer, and Olivia stepped closer, the hair on the back of her neck standing at attention. Maybe he'd gone to the cab to get something, or to call a friend for some help. A little rejected, she wondered why he hadn't asked her mother, since Sarah was a registered nurse. With measured steps, she circled the trailer and approached the cab to find… nothing. Thoroughly spooked, she found herself irrationally angry. "Jacob, damnit, where the fuck are you?!" She'd left La Push to get away from these strange feelings, and had only grudgingly left her antiseptic modern world after her aunt had downsized and no longer had room for her niece. The transfer to the state college had been expensive, after she'd forfeited her scholarship to her small, private school and hadn't secured any grants or anything for her new school. Not to mention the number of credits that the surprisingly conservative college refused to accept and she had therefore lost. All she had asked, albeit subconsciously, in return was none of the ghosts she could feel behind every corner. No more disappearances like Sam Uley's, and certainly no more stupid myths, her heritage or not. Kicking the tire, she walked back around the truck and picked up one of the two boxes left behind by the absent Black, shaken but not stirred.

- - -

Deep in the forest, Jacob's keen animal hearing picked his name, pronounced by a female name in disgust, out of the din of birds, deer, hikers, and other assorted creatures. With a surge of adrenaline, his thoughts jumped to that dangerous place. But no, the voice was familiar but not _hers_. A brief mental image of a small, slightly pudgy and extremely average young girl flashed before his eyes before Jacob sunk back into the wolf once more, leaving her echoes behind.


End file.
